


A World Made Up Of Silver and Copper

by CatKing_Catkin



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Companionable Snark, Con Artists, Developing Relationship, First Meetings, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Good Friend Yasha (Critical Role), Happy, Introspection, Mollymauk Tealeaf's Backstory, POV Mollymauk Tealeaf, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-06 03:26:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19054291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin
Summary: "Best lie I’ve ever told… I pretended to be royalty for three weeks. For a scam.""That’s fascinating, what kind of scam?""I was– Just a little while after I had gotten my consciousness sort of sorted out, and we got into a town and figured out that we could actually get some nice digs and they were seeing if I could maybe bullshit my way through it, and it was kind of my test. So I pretended to be a reincarnated royalty from across the sea.""Wow."Molly told Beau the story of the best lie he ever told, but he didn't tell her the *complete* story. He might have left out the part about the mysterious woman who saw right through him. Some memories, after all, are just for him to hold on to.





	A World Made Up Of Silver and Copper

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be my contribution for the Molly Tribute Zine, but, well...the bad news is that was recently canceled. The good news is that that means I'm free to post this publcly a lot earlier than I would have otherwise! Which is cool, because I've been sitting on this since January. 
> 
> Happy Pride, y'all. If you try to lecture me about how canon this is I'll come down on you like a ton of rectangular building things.

They’d been here three days and Molly still couldn’t believe it was working.

He’d thought this entire plan was some sick joke when Gustav had proposed it and, indeed, Orna had called it a “hazing” with a smile on her face. But Molly hadn’t even been able to speak for very long yet. He had _been_ Molly for even less time, just since they’d had to forge some papers and “M.T.” wouldn’t cut it anymore.

It had all been going so well and everyone was so proud of Molly and Molly was so proud of himself, damn it, so maybe that meant it was always inevitable that a soft voice would speak up from behind Molly one night as he was on the edges of the party and ask, “Why are you pretending to be a king?”

They waited patiently for Molly to finish choking on his wine before answering. Wiping his mouth, he looked around desperately for _help,_ but it was a big common room and despite the fact that they had a big party down here every night, that wasn’t stopping everyone from getting just as drunk as they had before. Then there was nothing for it but to look up at perhaps the largest woman he had ever seen. That didn’t say much, perhaps, given his life experience so far, but it meant a _lot_ then and there when she was looming over him having seen through the entire affair.

He opened his mouth to answer her and only a panicked little croak emerged. She waited patiently as he tried again and then _again_ , feeling the old voicelessness looming so dangerously close and adding to his panic. On the third attempt, she asked: “Do you need more wine?”

He nodded frantically and she obliged him by going to grab the new pitcher the serving girl had just laid out on the table. She refilled his glass by a generous measure and Molly downed it in three swallows, and somehow that gave him enough time to get his voice back, recover his wits, and consider his options. He could try to keep up the lie, but that seemed like a waste of time and would only embarrass him. He could call for the guards, but that would invite too much scrutiny to the circus as well and besides, it wasn’t as if she was _doing_ anything, she’d just asked a not-unreasonable question.

“I wanted to see if I could, honestly,” he said. “Well, _they_ wanted to see if I could.” He gestured to where Gustav and Desmond were into their fifth round of three-dragon ante, to where Orna was chatting up another serving girl. “And now that I’ve found out that I can, it’s…sort of fun?” The admission slipped out before he realized it, taking him aback. He hadn’t even admitted as much to Gustav yet; keeping up with everything had taken so much of his attention.

She nodded, her expression wavering not a twitch. “And you get the nicest rooms at the inn. That must count for something.”

“That’s how it started, yeah.” No point in denying as much. “But Gustav says that a place like this would get people who could afford these rooms once or twice a season. It’s not like we’re kicking anyone out, is it?” It was the explanation Gustav had given Molly when he’d asked, but Molly has easily seen the sense in it.

She seemed to as well. “Fair enough.” Then she poured herself some of the wine and downed it in two swallows. “So that’s how it started. Why are you still doing it?”

That was a harder answer to give. Gustav had said they would stay here until they were caught or until it looked like they were treading too close to bleeding the place dry in housing them, but Bo had got a good look at the larder and that point was a ways off.

She’d been a remarkably receptive audience so far. Molly couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a conversation where he hadn’t had to _pretend_ – pretend to be a king, pretend to be something more than a jumbled up mess of learned behavior that still had trouble speaking on bad days. Pretending was a lot of fun, but maybe he should take advantage of this rare opportunity. “It _is_ sort of fun,” he admitted with a grin, and thought he saw a flicker of amusement on her face. “And, and the serving girls keep coming up to me, asking about what it was like in Marquet five hundred years ago. And I realized I can tell them _anything_ , they’ll never know. So I can make up the best, most fantastical place and who _cares_ if it’s not true, it makes them happy! _I_ make them happy!”

What he would have told her, if he’d been able to talk for longer than a month, was that it felt good to make people happy, and he had so little to give besides his newly-recovered voice. He’d woken up with even less but the circus had found him and pieced him back together into something _good_. And he wanted to give that back. He wanted to spread that feeling around.

But all of those ideas were still a little big for Mollymauk Tealeaf to express, and actions were easier than words.

She seemed to understand some of it anyway, maybe from his words or maybe from his eyes. This time the smile was not brief, it lingered like a pleasant spring rain. “I suppose that’s all right,” she said. “Would you mind making me very happy by letting me get in on some more of that wine?”

“That depends. Do you promise not to call the guards on us?”

“Oh, I wasn’t going to do that anyway.”

“Fair enough, I wasn’t going to deny you the wine anyway.”

She threw back her head and laughed, loud and rich, drawing the eyes of everyone in the room to them. Molly, however, was learning how to notice his cue and he noticed it then, throwing an arm around her waist and throwing his other arm out wide, maybe spilling a few drops of wine on the floor in doing so. “Rejoice!” he declared. “My long-lost bodyguard has returned to me! This calls for an even greater celebration!”

The other patrons in the inn cheered, as did the staff and most of the circus. Gustav raised an eyebrow at Molly over the table, a look that said _we’ll talk later_ but it wasn’t a look that said Molly had done anything _wrong_ and so he felt that same, giddy feeling in their chest that came from telling a story and telling it well.

It turned out not to matter. The big woman with black and white hair was gone the next morning. Molly was sad to see her gone, but consoled himself with an itch he felt in the back of his mind, a suspicion in the way he sometimes got suspicions about things.

Somehow, he had a very definite feeling that he would see her again.

**Author's Note:**

> "Once I was the King of Spain  
> Now I eat humble pie~."


End file.
